


Lessons Part 2: Lessons from Jim

by Mendeia



Series: What Beyond (The Temple Steps Alight) [11]
Category: The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, The Sentinel
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Oneshot, Survival Lessons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-23 22:27:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4894675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mendeia/pseuds/Mendeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Then this is something your brain already knows how to do. When you're driving, you might be talking to someone or listening to the radio or thinking. But you are also thinking about driving, about what your body is doing to keep the car on the road. And you're looking ahead and behind and to the sides for any kind of trouble, like a deer running out in front of you or a car suddenly swerving. You don't consciously watch every car in case it swerves or every inch of forest in case an animal comes out, but you still react if it happens. Why?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons Part 2: Lessons from Jim

**Author's Note:**

> I hope these little lessons help somebody out there. This one, in particular, is close to my heart. I pride myself on being highly observant of my surroundings. Let's see how the others do!
> 
> Enjoy!

"Why am I doing this again, Sandburg?" Jim asked irritably.

"Because we need it," Blair shrugged. "Because it doesn't matter how well a Sentinel can see if they aren't paying attention. It doesn't matter if they can spot the clues if they don't actually know how to put them together."

"We've got courses for things like this," Jim pointed out. "It's called the Academy."

"Yeah, and you try to explain to those people why more than a hundred people suddenly want to sign up," Blair shook his head. "Even Simon agrees. You're the best. You can do this, man."

"We'll see." Jim crossed his arms. "I hate public speaking."

"What public?" Blair asked. "This is our tribe. And it's not a lecture." At the glare, he put up his hands. "I mean, it _is_ a lecture in that you'll be doing a lot of the talking. But it's not…nobody expects you to be anything but what you are. You're not a professor. We know that. We just want your opinion."

Blair poked his partner. "And I've never ever seen you turn down the chance to give your opinion, Ellison. Usually at length."

Jim swiped at him but smiled. At least Sandburg would be there to back him up if he needed it. As always. _A robbery or a kidnapping or a murder or talking to the entire population of SELF, he's always got my back. With so many Sentinels without Guides, I can really see how lucky I really am to have that_.

"Okay, Einstein. Let's do this."

Jim strode into the cafeteria, the only place big enough at the lodge for everybody to gather. And it seemed _everybody_ was there – even those Sentinels whose command of English was rough at best. The tables had all been pushed away and people crowded in clumps and crowds on chairs or on the floor wherever they could find room. Henri Brown had built a little podium out of the wood from an old waterbed, and this sat proudly at the far end of the room nearest the kitchen. It was a couple of yards across and about four feet wide, plenty big enough for Jim to stand on and gain a foot and a half of height over his audience. Blair bounced at his side, but opted to stay off the podium for now.

_We'll see how long that lasts_ , Jim thought. _The minute he's got something to say, he's going to be up here with me, voluntarily or not_.

As Jim gazed around the room while conversations died away, he was amazed at the crowd. What had been once just an idea was now a living, thriving community of close to 140 Sentinels and 30 other allies, family members, and Guides. And, Jim was startled to realize, there were no strangers to him in the crowd. Every man, woman, and child was someone he knew by name, knew if they were a Sentinel, and if so, knew their spirit animals. The only ones missing were the kids in Ivanna's care and the skeleton crew out manning the perimeter, and those, Jim knew, were the Sentinels either so old as to be least likely to need his lesson or those like Dmitri who had already learned and taught similar things before themselves. Even Simon, Joel, Henri, and Brian were in attendance, sitting near the Chancery group.

Jim glared at his Major Crimes coworkers on principle. They knew all this stuff already. There was no reason for them to be here but to give him a hard time later. They grinned back.

"Okay. Hi everybody," Jim surged ahead before letting himself think too much more. The room went instantly silent. "Sandburg and Benton have asked me to talk to you about observation today.

"I'm not a teacher, you all know that," he said, and a laugh ran through the crowd, "but being a cop has changed the way I use my senses. And this isn't about being a Sentinel. Being a Sentinel means you can see more, but that doesn't mean you're going to use it any better than anybody else. The difference is training and practice.

"One of the classes at the Police Academy taught that being a good observer had to do less with seeing everything and more with knowing what to look for. Let's try an example. I've got a plant in the crowd today. What's out of place?"

It was Simon who spoke up almost at once. "Race Bannon is wearing a trench-coat. Indoors."

"How many of you noticed it?" Jim asked. "Not how many of you can see it now that it's been pointed out, but how many looked at that and thought it was strange?" Some hands went up in the crowd, including, to Jim's pride, Blair's, the three Quest kids', and Daryl's.

"You could all see it. Why didn't you notice?"

"Because we weren't looking for it," Ngama said.

"And that's it right there," Jim nodded. "Observation isn't about how much you can see. It's about looking for what doesn't fit in a pattern. Imagine you're watching a sports game on television."

That elicited a round of groaning and Jim hurried on before he accidentally stirred up the recent debate that had taken over the previous night's dinner between two rival loyal rugby factions.

"One full set of the stands is fans of the blue team, and the other set is for the red team. But let's say two people switched tickets. One red shirt is going to stand out in a sea of blue shirts, and the single blue shirt will stand out in the sea of red shirts. You have to learn to look for that blue shirt in a sea of red so you know what's out of place.

"And it's not just what you can see. All your senses play a part in it. If you smell sulfur or rotten eggs, that's out of the ordinary and it's a deliberate signal of a gas leak. A Sentinel might have a more sensitive nose or might pick up a softer sound from farther away, but you have to learn to assess everything you take in, all the time, and let the noticeable stuff rise to the surface."

Blair bounced up and Jim smiled, conceding the floor to him. "As Sentinels, we're always teaching you to assess and dismiss what your senses are telling you. Like being able to sit in a room this full of people and, without having to consciously think about it, identify and catalog and then ignore all the different smells, from each person's shampoo to their clothes to a musty old towel or Simon's cigars. You've all been working on it, on letting your brain run in the background, catching the scents and isolating them and then ignoring them."

Jim nodded and took up the lecture again. "But to observe, you have to develop the secondary habit of having whatever doesn't belong rise to the top. It won't always be as obvious as a blue shirt in a crowd of red. You have to trust yourself to learn to dismiss anything not worth noticing and hone in on what matters." Jim crossed his arms. "So what's wrong right now?"

He smiled as he watched the room full of Sentinels begin stretching out all their senses, trying to take in everything and spot the tiny change. He watched carefully to see if any Sentinels started to zone, ready to sic the Guides on them if they needed it.

Suddenly Jonny looked up in alarm. "Blair's not breathing!"

Jim grinned as his partner deliberately let out the breath he'd been holding and gave Jonny a thumbs-up. "Thanks for spotting it before I turned purple."

Jim nudged him in the direction of a few Sentinels who had zoned and Blair hopped down to go help them, Hadji and Kaimi following in his wake. While the Guides worked, Jim returned to the lesson.

"Did anyone else catch it?" he asked. A few hands rose, including one or two of the non-Sentinels who were in the front rows. "Spotting what's missing is harder than seeing something that's there, but it's almost more important. If there was a person behind you on the bus and they stop breathing, you need to make sure they're okay. If there was a timer counting down and it suddenly stops, that's probably not good news."

He turned. "Jonny, how did you spot Blair's little trick?"

"Uh," he frowned as he tried to put it into words, "well, I already knew nothing had changed in what I could see since, you know, nothing changed. So it had to be a thing I could hear or smell. And…I'm not sure what I did. I just seized onto Blair somehow."

"That's right," Jim nodded. "This is more Sandburg's thing," but his Guide was busy so he forged on, "but the human brain, especially a Sentinel's brain, can take in a lot more data than we ever understand. It's the same reason we can remember so much if we try. We're like a computer with infinite memory about whatever we've experienced. But it also works in the moment.

"All of your brains took in all the input of the room when you were paying attention and before. All of you could hear Sandburg not breathing. Some of you might even have heard him very slowly taking in a big breath so he could hold it. What you have to do – and what I can't teach you to do – is get your brain to take whatever it absorbed and spit a highlights version back out that you can assess."

Jim switched tactics. "How many of you know how to drive?"

Most hands in the room went up.

"Then this is something your brain already knows how to do. When you're driving, you might be talking to someone or listening to the radio or thinking. But you are also thinking about driving, about what your body is doing to keep the car on the road. And you're looking ahead and behind and to the sides for any kind of trouble, like a deer running out in front of you or a car suddenly swerving. You don't consciously watch every car in case it swerves or every inch of forest in case an animal comes out, but you still react if it happens. Why?"

"Because a critter breaking from the trees is a change," Brian offered.

"Exactly. The pattern is an unbroken line of forest along the road. So as soon as something crosses that boundary, the change grabs your attention and you focus on it. Think about if you've ever driven in a winter storm. You're probably focusing on the feel of the car on the road in case there's black ice. You feel every bounce of the tires on the pavement, and you feel the littlest give if there's a patch of ice under the wheels because it's different than when the tires were on road. And that kind of heads-up can help you avoid losing control of the car.

"Now, imagine paying that close attention _all the time_. To everything around you."

"You'd go crazy," Kaimi declared quietly.

"If you tried to consciously focus on every little thing? Probably," Jim nodded. "But you don't have to. Your brain can do that without you. Like with driving a car, if you're just going along and listening to music, you aren't really listening to the sound of your tires or brakes. But if you teach your brain to be listening, if your brakes start squeaking, you'll notice. Because there will be a squeak where there wasn't before."

"But how do you teach your brain to listen for you like that?" Joel asked with a knowing glint in his eye.

"I'm not sure," Jim acknowledged. "But it takes practice. And you start by noticing the patterns. For example, of you who live here at the lodge, how many know where I always park my truck?"

A few hands went up.

"Really? That's all?" Jim shook his head. He looked to the Major Crimes group. "You guys?"

Every hand from the department went up. Jim noticed that the Quests and Daryl had their hands up also, as did Eric.

"Where do I park?" he asked, pointing to Eric.

"You always take the fourth space back on the left hand side of the parking lot just outside the front door," Eric answered promptly.

"And how do you know that?"

"Well…it's a pretty distinctive truck. And I just…kind of noticed that it was always there when you're here. So I got in the habit of looking for it when we come up here. If the truck's not there, you're not at the lodge. That way I don't have to go looking for you."

"Excellent. Sure you don't want to be a cop?" Jim teased. Eric shook his head, hiding a smile.

"Why does it matter where I park my truck?" Jim asked the room.

"Because if something happened, we'd need to be able to find you," shouted one of the Sentinels.

"Good. Why else?"

"Because if someone stole your truck and came up here, they wouldn't know that," answered Luka. "So if we saw your truck in a place really far away from your usual – and your usual spot was open – we'd know something was really wrong."

"Exactly," Jim nodded. "The observation of that fact puts you in better stead to have information that will help you in an emergency _or_ to warn you of an emergency before it happens."

"And don't forget," Blair returned to Jim's side and got on the podium, "most of you have another advantage. If you have a Sixth or Seventh sense, those are also taking in information all the time. Maybe you would walk up to a house and get a bad feeling. That could be one of your other senses telling you that they have perceived something that's seriously bad news but you can't tell any other way. If your Sixth or Seventh senses are yelling at you, you better pay attention."

"And, much as I hate to admit it," Jim said, "that Sixth sense does work with the others. You might have a feeling something is going to happen just before the deer jumps out from the woods. So get in the habit of bracing yourself to react whenever you have that bad feeling. If you're wrong and nothing happens, you don't lose anything by being ready. But if you ignore it and that deer comes out, you'll regret it."

"A lot of the tests Benton and I give you will help sharpen your senses and your ability to use them," Blair put in. "But only you can teach yourself to be paying attention all the time. First, it's a conscious effort, like managing the dials in your head. But as you do it more and more, it becomes second nature. How many of you are handling being in this room without consciously moving dials around?"

The fact that more than half of the Sentinels in the room raised their hands was a testament to Blair's tireless work with them and Jim felt a stab of pride in his Guide.

"And at first you had to do it all the time. But now, how many of you didn't even think about your dials until I mentioned them?"

Many of the hands stayed up, including Jim's and Jonny's.

"This works on the same principle," Jim said. "You'll have to start by watching everything, listening to everything, smelling everything. But you'll start to form baselines for how things normally are and you won't need to pay attention. And then something will happen that doesn't fit, that breaks the pattern. There will be a blue shirt in the red crowd, and you'll pick up on it."

"What makes for a good Sentinel or a good observer," Blair winked at Jim, "is being able to see what others miss. But you'll only see it if you know to look for it. So we've got a few tests ready for you all. Somewhere in the lodge greatroom are three things that are wrong. They should be perceptible to non-Sentinels, too. You all know this lodge backwards and forewards. I want everybody to go out and not come back until they can name all three things."

"And no cheating!" Jim said loudly as people began to move. "When you get back, we'll make you prove you found them all."

There was a rush for the doors of all but Jim, Blair, Benton, and Race. Jim noted with amusement that Jonny took one look at the crowd trying to get through the main door at the end of the cafeteria and quickly turned to lead his group out through the kitchen instead.

"I thought that went quite well," Benton said.

"I hope it got through to them," Jim let out a sigh. "It's like being asked to explain how you breathe. You just…do."

"That's because you're a trained observer, soldier, and detective," Race said. "But you weren't always. I think you gave about as good of an intro as anybody can."

"We'll find out." Blair reached to the counter-top behind him for a stack of paper and pencils.

They didn't have to wait long. Within two minutes the first group returned. Jim was not surprised to find that those who had spotted their little challenges first were Simon, Hadji, Jessie, Daryl, Ngama, and Joel. Jonny, Kaimi, and Eric were a little behind along with Brian and Henri and Luka.

One by one, Blair had the returning individuals write down their findings before he sent them to their places. The rest of the group started to return in greater numbers until only a few stragglers remained. But even those who were the slowest, returning to teasing and feigned admonitions, took less than thirty minutes.

When everyone was gathered, Jim got back on the podium. "You came back first," he pointed to Simon. "What was one of the three you found?"

"The flags had been moved over," Simon answered.

Blair grinned. That had been his idea. Along the back wall of the greatroom, running on a ledge above the first set of windows were flags for the home nations of everyone who was a member of SELF. There were only two dozen or so of them now, but they had cut holes to stand up as many as a hundred little flagpoles. Blair had moved the whole set down by about four notches, not changing the order of them, just moving them relative to the room itself.

"Very good. Everybody got that?" Jim called.

Other than some mild cursing in Chinese under someone's breath, most people nodded.

"Now you," he pointed to Daryl. "What have you got?"

"The floor rug in the hallway was turned around." Daryl's face shone with smug triumph. "I can tell because it's got a worn corner where it hits the door to the outside and the bottom corner always scrapes over it. But that end was facing into the room this time."

"Got it in one, kid," Jim grinned. Simon clapped his son on the shoulder with pride.

"Who wants to give us the third?"

Daryl elbowed Jessie, getting Jim's attention. He called on her.

"Well, you can't say anything definitive about couches being moved around out there," she pointed back to the greatroom, "because they get moved all the time. People drag stuff clear across the room on a daily basis. So the fact that the room was different isn't what you meant, is it?"

"No, it isn't," he smiled at her. "Did everybody get that."

This time the cursing was Russian, and there was more of it. Some laughter followed.

"Then what did you find?" Jim asked Jessie.

"Well, there's a new chair. It looks just like several of the others, so I didn't spot it at first, but now there's six grey chairs instead of five. And the new one is right where Doctor Sandburg always sits – you can tell because it isn't permanently dented to how he sits in it." She grinned at the Guide who smiled back.

"Nice work," Jim approved. "Everybody see that?"

At the grumbling, Blair spoke up. "You did see it. Every one of you went out there and you could all actually perceive the changes. But just because you could see what was there doesn't mean you recognized it. That's what you have to work on. And you'll only get there by practice!"

"So start practicing," Jim said. "And when you spot something out of the ordinary, point it out. We might keep leaving little surprises like this for you for a while. And if we don't and you spot something anyway, you might be the first to warn the rest of us about something really wrong."

Jim had run out of things to say, so he turned to Sandburg who stepped to the center with a flourish and wave. "And that's your homework assignment! Class dismissed!"


End file.
